Fifty killed in two suicide attacks in Iraq

At least fifty people are killed in two separate suicide attacks in less than twenty-four hours in northern Iraq.

worldUpdated: Jul 07, 2007 17:33 IST

IANS

At least fifty people were killed in two separate suicide attacks late on Friday and early on Saturday in northern Iraq.

At least 30 Iraqis were killed and more than 80 injured when a powerful truck bomb blast rocked a busy marketplace in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmato near Kirkuk on Saturday, according to witnesses and medical sources.

A hospital source in Tikrit, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, told DPA the blast was "so intense that the casualty toll could very well increase".

Shops in the market had sustained serious damage. Witnesses said they saw police cordoning off the area following the incident as ambulances rushed to the scene.

In another incident, 20 people were killed and 20 others injured in Khanaqin, 180 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, when a suicide bomber drove a vehicle into a funeral cortege on Friday evening, police sources said.

Khanaqin is populated mainly by Kurds, but is in Diyala province and outside the Kurdish autonomous region where the security situation is more stable.